Résumés
Abstract
In this paper, the authors draw on a reconceptualist framework to explore if and how sexual health content is addressed in provincial/territorial/Indigenous early years frameworks across Canada. Specifically applying a postdevelopment lens, this study examines how principles of the Canadian Guidelines for Sexual Health Education are present, absent, or alluded to in the early years frameworks in Canada. Findings show that explicit references to sexuality were largely absent across the frameworks, with a few notable exceptions. However, the authors illustrate openings in the current frameworks for integrating sexual health content in early years settings. The article concludes with a discussion on the opportunities for change and the theoretical shifts required in Canadian early years frameworks in efforts to ensure children’s access to comprehensive sexuality education.
Keywords:
- early childhood education,
- childhood innocence,
- gender,
- post-development,
- reconceptualist,
- sexuality education
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Parties annexes
Biographical notes
Jessica Prioletta (she/her) is an associate professor in the School of Education at Bishop’s University, Canada. Her research engages with critical feminist theories to examine gender in early childhood education and the ways in which gender violence propagates and is resisted at the intersections of childhood and early education. Jessica also investigates critical pedagogies for sexuality education as transformative practice in kindergarten education. Email: jpriolet@UBishops.ca
Lindsay Herriot (she/her) is a full-time special education teacher in the Greater Victoria School District and an adjunct professor in the School of Child of Youth Care and the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. She is the cofounder of the Gender Generations Project, a registered charity that hosts free weekend retreats for trans youth from across Canada, and the coeditor of Trans Youth Stories: An Intergenerational Dialogue After the “Trans Tipping Point,” which is the first known university textbook primarily authored by children and youth. Originally from unceded Mi’kmaq territory in New Brunswick, she lives with her spouse and three small children on unsurrendered Lekwungen territory in Victoria, BC. Email: lindsayherriot@uvic.ca
Adam Davies (they/them/he/him/all) is an associate professor in the School of Fine Arts and Music at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. Adam’s research interests are queer theory in education, critical disability studies, mad studies, and cultivating transformative educational spaces in early childhood education, K–12 schooling, and higher education. Adam conducts research on gender and sexual regulation; queer, mad, and disability pedagogies; and reimagining preservice early childhood education and teacher education. Email: adam.davies@uoguelph.ca
Pam Malins is an assistant professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, Brantford campus, Ontario. Her research interests span literacies, gender and sexual identities, and curriculum. In particular, she is passionate about the inclusion of expansive representations and conversations of gender and sexuality in early childhood education. She celebrates LGBTQ+ children’s literature, queer joy, and playfulness. Her most recent research involved listening to parents’ stories about raising gender-expansive children and using picture books as an entry point to conversations on gender and sexuality. Email: pmalins@wlu.ca
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